Novena to St Augustine: Nine Days for a Restless Heart

The novena to St Augustine is nine days of prayer to the bishop of Hippo, the Doctor of grace who lived for years far from God before he was brought back by his mother's tears and the voice that said Take up and read. It is prayed above all for conversion — our own, or that of a child, a husband, a friend who has wandered — and for purity. Below is the whole novena, day by day, with the Church's own prayer on his feast and when to begin it.

The novena to St Augustine: the daily prayer

This novena follows the Confessions, one stage of Augustine's road to God each day, in his own words where we quote him. The daily prayer and the short prayer of each day are a devotional composition, with no indulgence or approval of their own; the Church's own prayer, said at the end of every day, is the Collect of his feast. If we are new to the practice, what a novena is is worth reading first.

Each day, make the Sign of the Cross and say the daily prayer with your intention named:

St Augustine, Doctor of grace, thou who didst so long seek the truth outside thyself before finding it within, in God, I trust in thy powerful intercession. Thou whom prevenient mercy and a mother's tears led back from darkness to light, obtain for me a heart restless for God alone and an ardent desire of the goods that never perish; and I earnestly beseech thee to obtain for me also, if it please God and if it be good for my soul, the grace I so ardently ask in this novena.

(Here name, simply and plainly, your intention — the same throughout the nine days.)

St Augustine, Doctor of grace, pray for us. Amen.

Then read the meditation of the day, say the prayer of the day, and finish with one Our Father, three Hail Marys and one Glory Be. Every day closes with the versicle and the Collect of his feast:

V. Pray for us, O holy Augustine.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray. Give ear to our supplications, O almighty God: and to us, to whom Thou grantest the confidence of hoping for Thy loving-kindness, graciously grant, through the intercession of blessed Augustine, Thy Confessor and Bishop, the effect of Thy wonted mercy. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

That Collect, Adesto supplicationibus nostris, is the Church's own prayer in the Missal for 28 August.

The nine days of the novena

Day 1 — The restless heart

Augustine was born on 13 November 354 at Tagaste in Numidia, of a pagan father, Patricius, and a Christian mother, St Monica, who had him entered among the catechumens in infancy. Gifted, hungry for happiness and for truth, he bore for years a soul without rest, and he gave the secret on the first page of the Confessions: "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee" (Confessions I, 1).

St Augustine, thou didst know more than any other the disquiet of a heart that seeks its happiness where it is not: obtain for us that we seek rest no longer in creatures, but in God alone, who made us for Himself, and that we reach toward Him with all our desire until we rest in Him.

Day 2 — The wanderings of youth

Sent to Carthage to study rhetoric, he gave himself to the passions of youth. He took a companion, who bore him a son, Adeodatus; he confesses even the theft of a few pears, not from hunger but for love of the wrong itself (Confessions II, 4); and he remembers the prayer he made by halves: "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet" (Confessions VIII, 7).

St Augustine, thou didst not hide the sins of thy youth, but didst confess them to magnify the mercy that drew thee from them: obtain for those held fast by evil habits that they put off their conversion no longer, and grant us to dare say at last, without reserve: Lord, now.

Day 3 — The years of error

Troubled by the problem of evil, he joined the Manichees, who taught two eternal principles, one good and one evil, and he kept their company for nine years, "from my nineteenth year to my eight-and-twentieth" (Confessions IV, 1). He had first opened the Scriptures and turned away from their lowliness: "I disdained to be a little one; and, swollen with pride, took myself to be a great one" (Confessions III, 5).

St Augustine, thou didst wander long among false doctrines before grace opened thine eyes: obtain for those led astray by error and pride of mind the light of the true faith, and keep us humble before the mystery of God, who gives Himself to the little and hides from the proud.

Day 4 — The tears of St Monica

Through all those years his mother never ceased to pray, to fast and to weep for him. She begged a bishop to reason with her son; he would not, and when she pressed him with tears, he, "a little displeased at her importunity", sent her away with the words the Church has never forgotten: "Go thy ways and God bless thee, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish" (Confessions III, 12). She followed him across the sea to Italy and found him at last at Milan.

St Augustine, thou owest thy conversion, after the grace of God, to the tears and the stubborn prayer of thy mother: obtain for all parents who weep over a child estranged from God the perseverance of St Monica and the firm hope that no soul entrusted to God with so much love is ever lost.

Day 5 — St Ambrose and Milan

Made master of rhetoric at Milan in 384, he went to hear the bishop, St Ambrose, for the beauty of his eloquence; but the sermons that he came to admire began to work on his mind and heart.

St Augustine, the word of a holy bishop prepared thy soul for the grace of conversion: obtain for the Church holy pastors whose preaching scatters error; and grant us to listen with a docile heart to those whom God sets on our path.

Day 6 — Take and read

In 386, in a garden at Milan, torn between grace and the chain of habit, he threw himself down under a fig tree and wept: "How long, how long, 'tomorrow, and tomorrow?' Why not now?" Then he heard a child's voice from a neighbouring house, Tolle, lege — "Take up and read" — opened St Paul, and read: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy: But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences" (Romans 13:13-14). "All the darkness of doubt," he writes, "vanished away" (Confessions VIII, 12).

St Augustine, conversion is not the work of a man who finds God by his own strength, but of God who seizes the man unable to save himself: obtain for us to hear, we also, the voice that says to us, take up and read, and to yield without delay to the grace that goes before us, calls us, and transforms us.

Day 7 — The baptism and the death of St Monica

St Ambrose baptised him at the Easter Vigil of 387, with his son Adeodatus and his friend Alipius. Waiting at Ostia for a ship to Africa, mother and son spoke together at a window of the life of the saints, and rose for a moment, he says, to touch eternal Wisdom; a few days later Monica fell ill and died, asking only this: "that you would remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be" (Confessions IX, 10-11).

St Augustine, the day of thy baptism wiped away thy mother's tears: obtain for those who receive the grace of baptism, or return to it by penance, fidelity to the end, and grant us to remember our dead at the holy sacrifice of the altar, as St Monica asked.

Day 8 — The bishop and Doctor of grace

Ordained priest at Hippo in 391 and consecrated bishop in 395, he lived with his clergy in common and spent himself against the Manichees, the Donatists and above all Pelagius, who denied the necessity of grace.

St Augustine, Doctor of grace, thou didst teach the whole Church that God begins, accompanies, and crowns in us all that is good: obtain for us never to presume upon our own strength nor to despair of mercy, but to await all from the grace that goes before and to render all back to it by love.

Day 9 — Late have I loved Thee

He died on 28 August 430, in his seventy-sixth year, in the third month of the Vandal siege of Hippo, with the penitential psalms written out on the wall beside his bed so that he could read them with tears. His whole life is in the cry of the Confessions: "Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee!" (Confessions X, 27).

St Augustine, at the end of this novena, obtain for us that we love God not too late, as thou didst weep to have done, but give ourselves to Him without delay. Thou who restest at last in Him for whom thou wast made, bear up to the Lord the intention we have entrusted to thee, and obtain for us the grace we ask, if it be good for our soul.

A prayer to St Augustine for conversion

Augustine knew what it is to see the truth and still put it off — "'Anon, anon,' 'presently,' 'leave me but a little'" (Confessions VIII, 5) — and he is the natural intercessor for those who keep God waiting. Name the soul far from God plainly in the daily prayer; the fourth day is the heart of it.

When the one we pray for is a son or a daughter, it is fitting to ask the mother as well as the son. The novena to St Monica, kept before her feast, follows the same road from the other side: the prayer that waited, and was not disappointed. Her story is told in our life of St Monica, patron of mothers.

A prayer to St Augustine for purity

The struggle Augustine lost for so long, and won only by grace, was for chastity. The most powerful prayer he left for it is seven Latin words from the tenth book of the Confessions (X, 29), words that, as he himself recalls in On the Gift of Perseverance (20, 53), Pelagius could not bear to hear quoted:

Da quod iubes, et iube quod vis.

Give what Thou enjoinest, and enjoin what Thou wilt.

The lines that follow say what he learned: "Thou enjoinest us continency", and no man can be continent "unless God give it". Purity is a gift, given to those who ask for it not by halves. The fruit of the novena for this intention is a good confession, and how to go to confession after years away is the practical next step.

A prayer to St Augustine for healing and for intercession

His biographer St Possidius records that, in his last illness, he laid his hand on a sick man brought to him, who went away healed, and that demoniacs were freed when he prayed for them with tears (Life, 29). For the sick or any grave need, pray the novena as it stands; the simplest prayer to St Augustine of Hippo is the versicle that closes each day of this novena, said at any hour: Pray for us, O holy Augustine, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

The St Augustine prayer: his own words

When people speak of "the St Augustine prayer", they usually mean one of his own prayers — "Our heart is restless", "Late have I loved Thee" — given in Latin and English in the prayers of St Augustine.

The prayer to the Holy Spirit and the evening prayer

"Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy" is printed everywhere as his prayer to the Holy Spirit, and "Watch Thou, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight" as his evening prayer. Both are sound, but neither has been traced to his writings; the same article gives them as attributed. Those who love the first will find the Church's own prayers to the Third Person in the Litany of the Holy Ghost.

When to pray the novena to St Augustine

St Augustine's feast in the calendar of 1962 is 28 August, a feast of the third class: Saint Augustine, Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church. A novena ends either on the eve or on the day of the feast, so there are two customs:

• 19 to 27 August, finishing on the eve so that the feast itself is a day of thanksgiving;
• 20 to 28 August, finishing on the feast, ideally with Mass and Holy Communion that morning.

Both are good. St Monica keeps her place on 4 May in the 1962 calendar, so the two novenas fall in different seasons; the reformed calendar of 1969 moved her to 27 August, the eve of her son's feast, which is why newer books join them in late August. Both dates are in the traditional liturgical calendar of 1962.

Outside August, it may be prayed whenever a conversion is awaited. It is not a formula that obliges God: nine days of asking are the shape of a perseverance like Monica's, and God answers in His hour.

Novena to St Augustine PDF

The full text of the novena is above — the daily prayer, the nine days and the closing Collect — and it prints as it is. Better still, Join early access here. sets each day's text before you in Latin and English, reminds you to pray it, and works offline, so the nine days are not lost after the third.

Who was St Augustine?

As Butler's Lives of the Saints tells it, back in Africa after his baptism he gave away his patrimony and lived in common with his friends at Tagaste until, having "no idea of becoming a priest", he was ordained for Hippo in 391. Bishop for thirty-five years, he gave the revenues of his church to the poor, sometimes melted down the sacred vessels to redeem captives, and wrote the letter from which the Rule of St Augustine was drawn, still followed by canons regular, friars and nuns. "I do not wish to be saved without you," he told his people (Sermon 17, 2).

His whole life and teaching are told in our page on St Augustine of Hippo, and his Office can be prayed on 28 August in the Divine Office of 1962.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do you pray to St Augustine for?

Above all for conversion and for purity, as set out above. Students, teachers and all who seek the truth with a restless mind ask his help in understanding the faith.

How long did St Monica pray for St Augustine?

From his student days at Carthage, through his nine years among the Manichees, until his baptism at Easter 387, when he was thirty-two: a span commonly reckoned at seventeen or eighteen years. Butler notes that her consoling dream came "almost nine years before Augustine's conversion", and she never ceased praying.

Did St Augustine pray to Mary?

No prayer of his to Our Lady survives among his authentic works. He did honour her singularly, writing of sin: "We must except the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins, out of honour to the Lord" (On Nature and Grace, 36, 42).

Is St Augustine of Hippo the same as St Augustine of Canterbury?

No. Augustine of Hippo, the Doctor of the Church, died in 430 and is kept on 28 August. Augustine of Canterbury, the monk St Gregory the Great sent to the English, died about 604 and is kept on 28 May.

What is on a St Augustine prayer card?

Most carry "Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit" under his name, or the line "our heart is restless until it repose in Thee". Only the second is truly his.

What is St Augustine the patron saint of?

He is invoked above all by converts and by those who seek the truth, and he is the patron of theologians and of the many religious families that live by his Rule — the Augustinian friars, the canons regular and numerous congregations of nuns.

The Iter Fidei app carries the novena to St Augustine day by day, with his Mass and Office on 28 August and the prayers of the Church in Latin and English. Join early access here.

Sources. St Augustine, Confessions I, 1; II, 4; III, 5 and 12; IV, 1; VIII, 5, 7 and 12; IX, 10-11; X, 27 and 29. St Augustine, On Nature and Grace, 36, 42; On the Gift of Perseverance, 20, 53; Sermon 17. Romans 13:13-14 (Douay-Rheims). St Possidius, Life of St Augustine, 24 and 29-31. Butler's Lives of the Saints, 28 August (St Augustine) and 4 May (St Monica). Missale Romanum (1962), 28 August, Collect Adesto supplicationibus nostris; Breviarium Romanum (1962), 28 August and 4 May.